INTERVIEW: Architects

The lovely Sam Carter and Tom Searle from Architects had a chat with us before their sensational performance at Vans Warped Tour UK. Read all about their mammoth touring schedule, why they hate headlining and find out where Tom’s mum went on holiday with the band.

How does it feel to be playing the first Vans Warped Tour in thirteen years?

Tom: I dunno yet, haha.

Yeah, well you know what I mean. How does it feel that you will be playing then?

Sam: Really good.

Tom: Good, yeah. I’ve got that slightly nervous feeling, and I’ll tell you what happens when you get that slightly nervous feeling about a show. You either go on stage, it’s really awesome and the feeling turns to true excitement. Or you go on stage, nothing really happens and it’s really gutting. But it is London, and I can’t remember the last time we played in London when it was bad.

So, being the first UK Warped in a long time, do you feel any pressure to live up to the event?

Tom: No, not really.

Sam: That’s Warped Tour issue not ours.

Tom: Haha, yeah. But I think they have done a really good job to be fair. I have never been to this venue and I don’t really know how it’s going to work. But it’s a big room and it looks like it’ll be great.

The overall line-up is quite punk dominated. Being one of a handful of metal bands, does that worry you slightly?

Tom: If we were Lamb Of God then yeah haha. But no, I think kids now, like myself, like Decapitated and a load of pop groups so it’s not limited to that. We don’t class ourselves as metal though. Look at us, we look the same as the pop-punk bands and we’re under the same umbrella really.

Any plans to dumb your set down a little bit then? Or are you still going to go all out heavy?

Sam: No, we’re going all out heavy.

Tom: This whole tour we’ve played the heaviest set possible. People ask us to play Heartburn but that’s never going to happen anymore. We just want to go heavy.

You’ve had a pretty relentless touring schedule recently, playing shows in Canada, Malaysia and all over the world. How is that?

Sam: Yeah, to be fair it’s the longest we’ve ever been away, longest tour we’ve ever done, but I really enjoyed that way of touring. Moving from set tour to set tour, it really wasn’t that hard.

Tom: Yeah, you can either do it that way or you go three weeks one place then you come home for three weeks then you go out to Australia for another two weeks. But this way we just put it all back to back and it’s better because you never get out of flow. We had four days off before the show in Southampton last night, and after four days, I’d forgotten how to do everything again haha.

Sam: You just get in a routine and it’s much easier really.

Tom: It’s a fucking long time, but it’s just a party every day and all you really have to worry about is not going to hospital.

Sam: And the thing is, because you go from tour to tour, it’s all in stages. So we think “oh we’ve got two weeks left of this tour” rather than “fucking hell we’ve got so long left”.

Are there any particular highlights of the recent tours?

Sam: Yeah, so many. Hong Kong was wild.

Tom: The shows in Toronto were probably the best shows we’ve ever done. We had four days off in Bali, so my mum came out and we had a little holiday. It was awesome.

Sam: Australia. We met some amazing friends out there.

Tom: Europe as well haha. We shared a bus with While She Sleeps, we got on like a house on fire and every show was insane.

So you worked hard and you played hard then?

Sam: Haha, definitely. But I don’t really know what part of it all was work really.

Tom: China. China was work.

Sam: Oh god yeah, haha.

You had a mixture of headline and support dates on these tours. Do you prefer headlining?

Sam: No.

Tom: No, we hate it haha.

Why?

Tom: Because there’s just that worry that we aren’t going to live up to the support bands. I just worried every day that people were going to leave.

Sam: There is pressure headlining. Whereas, when you’re support it’s not our show.

Tom: The ticket sales aren’t on you, the reaction is not on you and the merch sales don’t matter.

But does the “headline treatment” and crowd reception you get headlining not outweigh all that though?

Sam: Sometimes it’s hard to gage. It really depends on the show.

Have you ever tactically thought about your support bands then, being cautious of who could possibly out-stage you?

Sam: I quite like being the support band, so we can out-stage them.

Tom: Yeah I have more confidence as a support band, so we can blow them all out of the water. But yeah, I have stood there a few times thinking “fuck they were good”.

We saw you guys at Slam Dunk this year, where you headlined over so many great American metalcore bands…

Tom: and now you’re really talking about pressure headlining haha.

Sam: When Everytime I Die play before you, it’s pretty fucking scary. At that point you’re thinking… shit.

Haha, well you guys pulled it off and fully deserved to be the headliners.

Sam: Thanks man.

So Daybreaker has been out for quite a while now, were you happy with the reception it got?

Tom: I had a lot of confidence in that record. I felt like we really had a point to prove after The Here and Now and, even though I don’t think it’s possible for me to feel 100% happy about a record, we all had so much confidence in it. There were a few reviews I was slightly disappointed in, simply because I am really proud of it, but overall the reaction from the fans was great. It’s put us in a really good place.

What are your plans for the next album then?

Tom: I want to make it the heaviest album we’ve ever written. I know I’ve just really built it up now, but I really want to. There will be some melodics in there though.

Sounds brilliant. We expect nothing less than heavy from Architects anymore.

Tom: Oh I’m going to really push it on this one. I’ve just started the writing process, so it’s kind of a blank canvas at the moment.

The Here and Now was an experiment away from your usual style. Are you going to try anything new on the next album, but push the boundaries at the other end of the spectrum?

Tom: Yeah, probably, I mean I say I want to go heavy but there are loads of bands who are “heavy” and all they do is tune their guitars down and chug opens. I’m not just going to do that. So, we’ve got to find an Architects way of doing heavy. I don’t want to lose what makes our band our band, so that’s the challenge really.

Have you got a time frame on when you want it all to start taking shape?

Tom: We’ve got four months after this tour, so I’m just going to live in my bedroom demoing all day every day.

Sam: And I’m just going to sit checking my emails and just wait til I can say “that is fucking great”.

So is that how your writing process usually works then?

Tom: Well it’s how we did it on Daybreaker. That was the first time I learnt how to use a computer.

Sam: It makes it so much easier because Tom has always written all the music.

Tom: And it’s great just being able to hear it.

Sam: Yeah, because at band practice you can’t really hear all the parts so it’s great that I can hear every chord progression and really focus on everything.

Awesome. I’m really looking forward to it when it arrives. Anyway, good luck with the show today, and thanks a lot for chatting to us.